


A Friendly Face

by radioqueen



Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Caretaking, Dubiously Consensual Kissing, M/M, Mind Control, Nightmares, Sharing a Bed, coma recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 19:29:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9840704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radioqueen/pseuds/radioqueen
Summary: Prompt: "Edge of consciousness." Mark's first night after the rescue.





	

Mark didn’t realize he was screaming in his sleep until Damien shook him awake.

“Come on, man!” Damien glanced at the door, as if afraid someone would kick it in at any moment. “Stop! Are you trying to get us caught?”

Mark stopped yelling, opening his eyes. “Jesus. I’m sorry.”

“What the fuck were you dreaming about?”

“Donald Trump winning the election.”

The stress erased itself off Damien’s face, and he laughed. “Don’t worry, that’s one fear you don’t have to worry about. He’ll never win. Everyone thinks he's a total joke.”

“Yeah,” Mark said, trying to smile. The last thing he needed was for Damien to figure out the real reason for the nightmare—that Mark had been trapped back in 1810 again.

“Chill,” Damien said. “You’re safe now.”

“Seems hard to believe,” Mark murmured, even as a warm wave of relaxation washed over him.

“Yeah, well, A lot of things about me are hard to believe.”

“Ooh, edgy.”

“Just relax,” Damien said.

Mark wanted to relax. He wanted to be calm and happy. He wanted it more than he’d ever wanted anything else.

“Do you need anything?” Damien asked.

“No.”

“Tell the truth.”

Mark hesitated for a moment, until the urge to tell Damien everything won out. “I could use a drink,” he said. “And… some help changing.”

“Cool. I’m on it.”

Damien didn’t seem like the type of guy who’d be cool with driving you to the airport, much less changing a grown man’s wet diaper. Actually, he seemed downright lazy and more than a little selfish. But he’d jumped right in to help every time Mark had needed it, which made Mark feel like a total jerkass for judging Damien as a douche despite all evidence to the contrary.

“Lucky you knew what to bring,” Mark commented as Damien yanked the sheet back over him.

“Yeah, well… I did my research,” Damien said.

He was lying. Mark didn’t know how he knew that, but he knew. But if Damien was doing this on the fly, frantically scrolling through WikiHow articles while Mark slept, then he wasn’t doing a half bad job. And who was Mark to look a gift horse in the mouth?

Lost in thought, he choked on the water, spitting the straw back into the plastic bottle.

“Easy.” Damien thumped him on the back. “Don’t get greedy, now.”

“Just… weak muscles,” Mark coughed.

“Huh. I never thought about that.”

“They didn’t exactly spoon-feed me while I was in my coma,” Mark said. “That tube you pulled out of my nose earlier? I’m pretty sure that’s how they were feeding me.”

“Fun times,” Damien said. “More water?”

“No. Thanks.”

“Any time. What else you need?”

There it was again—the sudden, irrational want to confide in Damien.

“Some company?” Mark said.

“Uh, can you be more specific?”

“I dunno. I was alone for most of the last two years.”

“You want me to get into the bed with you?”

“If that’s not weird, yeah. No homo and all that.”

Damien snorted. “I don’t give a shit about that. I just don’t want anyone thinking I’m taking advantage of you.”

“Trust me, my body may be fucked up, but my mind’s as solid as ever,” Mark said.

Damien was quiet, in a way that made Mark realize Damien had meant something else. Before Mark could react, though, Damien flopped onto the other side of the bed in his T-shirt and boxers, crossing his ankles.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Can we turn on the television? I have a lot of catching up to do.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Damien flipped it to a late night rerun of Modern Family. Mark watched intently, excited to get up-to-date on the show, but he felt Damien’s eyes on the side of his face.

Slowly, the urge to kiss Damien overpowered Mark, until he couldn’t even think about the show anymore. He fought the desire for several minutes, until he finally rolled over, painstaking in his slowness, and kissed Damien.

Damien recoiled in surprise, but only for a second. His next instinct was, apparently, to kiss Mark back. He ran his fingers through Mark’s long hair, kissing him with the same desperate hunger Mark had felt earlier, when he’d devoured his first grilled cheese in four years.

“Shit,” Damien breathed.

"What?"

“Nothing. It's just... Uh… you seem sleepy. You probably want to go back to sleep, huh?”

“Not really. I actually…” Mark turned his head and yawned. “Huh. Yeah, maybe I do.”

He nestled down into the sheets, which Damien tucked around his neck. As Mark drifted off, he fought through the fuzziness in his brain to ponder what he’d just done.

Sam’s had been the first friendly face Mark had seen in 1810, and Damien’s had been the first he’d seen in 2016. Sam had joked about being his knight in shining armor, but Damien had been the one to carry Mark away from his coma and whisk him into the sunset, so to speak. Maybe it wasn’t too unusual to have these kinds of feelings for the person who'd rescued you from the top-secret government facility horrifically experimenting on you.

Before Mark could figure it out properly, he fell into the deep sleep he’d suddenly wanted so badly.


End file.
